An Icon of Unity

New York Times best-seller, Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love, available in paperback with a new foreword

A paperback edition of Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love has been published by Penguin Random House with a new foreword by Los Angeles Archbishop José Gómez.

The book, written by Supreme Knight Carl Anderson and Msgr. Eduardo Chávez, an expert on the Marian apparitions witnessed by St. Juan Diego in 16th-century Mexico, was a New York Times best-seller in its original hardcover edition in 2009.

“Anderson and Chávez rightly understand that the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe is prophetic,” writes Archbishop Gómez. “And I share their belief that the Mother of God holds the ‘key’ for understanding these times.”

He notes that Our Lady of Guadalupe came dressed in the garments of the indigenous peoples, and she spoke to Juan Diego in his native language.

In this way, the archbishop argues, Our Lady of Guadalupe reminds us that the Church was established to be the vanguard of a new humanity that is not based on race or national origin.

“She is then a profound icon of the unity of humanity and the Church’s mission to create one family of God out of all the world’s nations and races, peoples and languages,” he writes. “In this, Guadalupe gives us a vision of the world as God wants it to be.”

Supreme Knight Anderson has been chief executive and chairman of the Knights of Columbus Board of Directors since 2000 and is the author of two New York Times best-sellers. Msgr. Chávez is the co-founder and dean of the Higher Institute for Guadalupan Studies in Mexico City.